36 ideas
| 7990 | Serene wisdom is freedom from ties, and indifference to fortune [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Who everywhere is free from all ties, who neither rejoices nor sorrows if fortune is good or is ill, his is a serene wisdom. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.57) | |
| A reaction: This is very similar to the 'apatheia' of the Stoics, though they are always more committed to rationality. This is quite a good strategy when times are hard, but as a general rule it offers a bogus state of 'wisdom' which is really half way to death. |
| 20981 | What justifies reliance on reason? Is it just a tool? Why is it better than blind belief? [Sen] |
| Full Idea: What is the ultimate justification for relying on reason? Is reason cherished as a good tool, and if so, how does it differ from blind and unquestioning belief? | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 01 'Critique') | |
| A reaction: And can it answer the romantic charge of stunting a rich life? NIetzsche started this one, by asking the value of truth. Proposal: treat others rationally, and treat yourself intuitively. |
| 20982 | In politics and ethics, scrutiny from different perspectives is essential for objectivity [Sen] |
| Full Idea: I take reasoned scrutiny from different perspectives to be an essential part of the demands of objectivity for ethical and political convictions. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 01 'Adam') | |
| A reaction: We should distinguish the nature of objectivity from ways of achieving it. Multiple perspectives don't guarantee objectivity. This is peer review in science, and publisher's readers of philosophy texts. What is objectivity? The same as truth? |
| 7989 | Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.49) | |
| A reaction: Quotations like this can usually be counterbalanced in eastern philosophy by wild irrationality, but they certainly felt to tug of reason. Only the Dhaoists seem really opposed to reason (e.g. Idea 7289). |
| 7996 | I am all the beauty and goodness of things, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: I am the beauty of all things beautiful; ...I am the goodness of those who are good, says Krishna. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.36) | |
| A reaction: Another attempt to annexe everything which is admirable to the nature of God. This sounds strikingly Platonic (c.f. Idea 7992, which seems Aristotelian). One scholar dates the text to 150 BCE. I think there is influence, one way or the other. |
| 7995 | In all living beings I am the light of consciousness, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: In all living beings I am the light of consciousness, says Krishna. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.22) | |
| A reaction: Everything grand seems to be claimed for God at this stage of culture, but I am not sure how coherent this view is, unless this is pantheism. In what sense could we possibly be Krishna, when none of us (except Arjuna) is aware of it? |
| 20990 | Rationality is conformity to reasons that can be sustained even after scrutiny [Sen] |
| Full Idea: My main argument can be fairly easily understood in terms of seeing rationality as conformity with reasons that one can sustain, even after scrutiny, and not just at first sight. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 08 'Rational' n) | |
| A reaction: We would need to say more about the 'scrutiny' before we had a really good account of rationality here. In Idea 20982 he emphasises the need for scrutiny by other people, and not mere self-criticism. The key may to be invite outside criticism. |
| 7999 | All actions come from: body, lower self, perception, means of action, or Fate [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Whatever a man does, good or bad, in thought, word or deed, has these five sources of action: the body, the lower 'I am', the means of perception, the means of action, and Fate. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 18.14/15) | |
| A reaction: The 'means of action' will presumably take care of anything we haven't thought of! Nothing quite matches the idea of 'the will' here. A twitch from the first, eating from the second, a startled jump from the third, struck by lightning from the fifth. |
| 7991 | Hate and lust have their roots in man's lower nature [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Hate and lust for things of nature have their roots in man's lower nature. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 3.34) | |
| A reaction: It seems outmoded now (since Freud) to label parts of human nature as 'higher' and 'lower'. I would defend the distinction, but it is not self-evident. The basis of morality is good citizenship, and parts of our nature are detrimental to that. |
| 21005 | A human right is not plausible if public scrutiny might reject it [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The force of a claim for a human right would indeed be seriously undermined if it were possible to show that it is unlikely to survive open public scrutiny. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 17 'Scrutiny') | |
| A reaction: This is a public aspect of Scanlon's 'contractualist' approach to ethics. You can hardly disagree with the idea, though anti-racist legislation in a strongly racist society might be a good test case. |
| 20983 | The original position insures that the agreements reached are fair [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The original position is the appropriate initial status quo which insures that the fundamental agreements reached in it are fair. This fact yields the name 'justice as fairness'. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 01.4) | |
| A reaction: I suppose it insures fairness on day one of the new society, but that might have all been wiped out in the next fortnight, when you find you are the least advantaged as a result of racism. |
| 20987 | The veil of ignorance encourages neutral interests, but not a wider view of values [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The veil of ignorance is very effective for making people see beyond their vested interests and goals. And yet it does little to ensure an open scrutiny of local and possibly parochial values. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 06 'Original') | |
| A reaction: Communitarians also make a similar criticism of Rawls - that people in the initial position simplify themselves into pure rational agents looking for 'basic goods'. |
| 20984 | A social contract limits the pursuit of justice to members of a single society [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The use of the social contract in the Rawlsian form inescapably limits the involvement of participants in the pursuit of justice to the members of a given polity, or 'people'. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 02 'Relevance') | |
| A reaction: This relates to the criticism of contractarian ethics - that the weak have nothing to bargain with. One can either add international contracts, or appeal to natural human rights. Or we could just be nice to one another? Nah! |
| 20986 | A person's voice may count because of their interests, or because of their good sense [Sen] |
| Full Idea: A person's voice may count either because her interests are involved, or because he reasoning and judgement can enlighten a discussion. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 04 'Diversity') | |
| A reaction: Good. Inarticulate people may have strong interests, and articulate and helpful people may be wholly disinterested. But people may have unworthy interests, and may be articulate but not sensible. |
| 21001 | Famines tend to be caused by authoritarian rule [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The history of famines has had a peculiarly close connection with authoritarian rules. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 16 'Famine') | |
| A reaction: He cites the British Empire, the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia. There is unlikely to be a local famine if there is free movement of food supplies.342 |
| 21002 | Effective democracy needs tolerant values [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The formation of tolerant values is quite central to the smooth functioning of a democratic system. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 16 'Minority') | |
| A reaction: There is presumably a brutal sort of democracy, if the majority in a polarised society agree to crush a minority. |
| 20999 | Democracy as 'government by discussion' now has wide support [Sen] |
| Full Idea: In contemporary political philosophy the view that democracy is best seen as 'government by discussion' has gained widespread support. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 15 'Content') | |
| A reaction: The obvious worry about this is inefficiency in decision-making. Also the dominance of noisy stupidity. But citizens need to feel involved, and committed to the decisions. |
| 20979 | Democracy needs more than some institutions; diverse sections of the people must be heard [Sen] |
| Full Idea: Democracy has to be judged not just by the institutions that formally exist but by the extent to which different voices from diverse sections of the people can actually be heard. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], Pref 'Public') | |
| A reaction: Depends what you mean by 'democracy'. Should the workplace and the school and the family be democratic, or just the choice of leaders? What can oblige leaders to listen to the people? Listen to, and then ignore? |
| 20993 | Eradicating smallpox does not impoverish nature [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The eradication of smallpox is not viewed as an impoverishment of nature. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 11 'Sustainable') | |
| A reaction: You'd have to be a pretty 'deep' ecologist to defend the carrier of smallpox, or Dutch Elm disease. The idea is included for balance. |
| 20995 | Capabilities are part of freedom, involving real opportunities [Sen] |
| Full Idea: Capability is an aspect of freedom, concentrating in particular on substantive opportunities. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 13 'Well-being') | |
| A reaction: This is the 'capabilities approach' of Sen and Nussbaum. The key word is 'substantive' (as opposed to theoretical). We are all free to become astronauts, but.... |
| 20998 | Freedom can involve capabilities, independence and non-interference [Sen] |
| Full Idea: There is no embarrassment in accommodating several distinct features within the idea of freedom, focusing respectively on capability, lack of dependence and lack of interference. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 14 'Capability') | |
| A reaction: This relates to Berlin's distinction between negative and positive rights. |
| 20997 | The need for equality among people arises from impartiality and objectivity [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The demand for seeing people as equals (in some important perspective) relates to the normative demand for impartiality, and the related claims of objectivity. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 14 'Equality') | |
| A reaction: Either impartiality already contains (analytically) the concept of equality, or the principle of sufficient reason must be invoked. True impartiality removes any reason for preferring one person to another. But what if preference is 'to my taste'? |
| 20996 | All modern theories of justice demand equality of something [Sen] |
| Full Idea: Every normative theory of social justice that has received support and advocacy in recent times seems to demand equality of something. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 14 Intro) | |
| A reaction: He mentions liberties, income, rights and utilities. |
| 5064 | Rights are moral significance, or liberty, or right not to be restrained, or entitlement [Mawson] |
| Full Idea: A 'right' can mean 'x counts morally', or 'x is permitted to do this' (liberty), or 'x can't be stopped from doing this' (negative right), or 'someone should provide this for x'. | |
| From: Tim Mawson (Animal Rights talk [2003]), quoted by PG - lecture notes | |
| A reaction: A useful analysis. It is a useful preliminary to considering whether any of these are natural rights. Personally I am sympathetic to that concept. You cannot deny a person's right to self-defence, even when you are sitting on them. Persons have rights. |
| 20988 | Freedom from torture or terrorist attacks is independent of citizenship [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The human right of a person not to be tortured or subjected to terrorist attacks is affirmed independently of the country of which this person is a citizen. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 06 'Exclusionary') | |
| A reaction: If rights can only be enshrined in a legal system, then I presume all systems of legal rights should ensure rights like these, irrespective of their nation. A universal charter of rights for tourists and alien residents? |
| 20980 | You don't need a complete theory of justice to see that slavery is wrong [Sen] |
| Full Idea: It was the diagnosis of an intolerable injustice in slavery that made abolition an overwhelming priority, and this did not require a search for a consensus on what a perfectly just society would look like. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], Intro 'Classical') | |
| A reaction: This illustrates Sen's key points, that we should focus on injustices, which are obvious, and that designing a totally just society has little relevance to justice in practice (which is what matters). Well said. |
| 20978 | Practical justice concerns not only ideals, but ways to achieve them [Sen] |
| Full Idea: A theory of justice that can serve as the basis of practical reason must include ways of judging how to reduce injustice and advance justice, rather than aiming only at the characterisation of perfectly just societies. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], Pref 'What') | |
| A reaction: Sounds simple, but this is Amartya Sen's revolutionary new idea - that justice is not just ideals and opportunities, but what sort of life people actually end up with. |
| 20985 | Our institutions should promote justice, rather than embodying it [Sen] |
| Full Idea: We have to seek institutions that promote justice, rather than treating the institutions as themselves manifestations of justice. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 03 'Institutions') | |
| A reaction: The best quote I can find for summarising Sen's view. He criticises Rawls and others for trying to design institutions that embody justice. Our legal system promotes justice. Do our schools and hospitals? The Department for the Promotion of Justice? |
| 20994 | We must focus on removing manifest injustice, not just try to design a perfect society [Sen] |
| Full Idea: The demands of justice must give priority to the removal of manifest injustice, rather than concentrating on the long-distance search for the perfectly just society. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 12 'Disability') | |
| A reaction: So the point is not to understand the world, but to change it? I'd want to put in a word for the theoretical and idealised project, which I see in terms of writing the perfect constitution. You can't just pick off injustices, perceived intuitively. |
| 21000 | If justice needs public reasoning, which needs democracy, then justice and democracy are linked [Sen] |
| Full Idea: If the demands of justice can be assessed only with the help of public reasoning, and that is constitutively related to the idea of democracy, then there is an intimate connection between justice and democracy. | |
| From: Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice [2009], 15 'Content') | |
| A reaction: I suspect that he argued early on that rationality required many perspectives in order to later mount this defence of democracy. |
| 7988 | There is no greater good for a warrior than to fight in a just war [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: There is no greater good for a warrior than to fight in righteous war. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.31) | |
| A reaction: What worries me now is not the urging to fight, as long as a good cause can be found, but the idea that someone should see his social role as 'warrior'. The modern 'soldier' is ready to fight, but a traditional 'warrior' is obliged to fight. |
| 7992 | The visible forms of nature are earth, water, fire, air, ether; mind, reason, and the sense of 'I' [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: The visible forms of nature are eight: earth, water, fire, air, ether; the mind, reason, and the sense of 'I'. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there is an implication that there are also invisible forms. The Bhuddists launched an attack on 'I' as one of the categories. The first five appear to be Aristotle's, which must be of scholarly (and chronological) interest. |
| 7994 | Everything, including the gods, comes from me, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: All the gods come from me, says Krishna. ...I am the one source of all | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.2/8) | |
| A reaction: This seems very close to monotheism, and sounds very similar to the position that Zeus seems to occupy in later Greek religion, where he is shading off into a supreme and spiritual entity. |
| 7993 | Brahman is supreme, Atman his spirit in man, and Karma is the force of creation [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Brahman is supreme, the Eternal. Atman is his Spirit in man. Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their life. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: I can't help wondering how they know all this stuff, but then I'm just a typical product of my culture. We seem to have a trinity here. Who's in charge? Is Atman just a servant? Is Karma totally under the control of Brahman? |
| 7997 | Only by love can men see me, know me, and come to me, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Only by love can men see me, and know me, and come unto me, says Krishna | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 11.54) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a paradox here, as it is unclear how you can love Krishna, if you have not already seen him in some way. This is another paradox of fideism - that faith cannot possibly be the first step in a religion, as faith needs a target. |
| 7998 | The three gates of hell are lust, anger and greed [Anon (Bhag)] |
| Full Idea: Three are the gates of this hell, the death of the soul: the gate of lust, the gate of wrath, and the gate of greed. Let a man shun the three. | |
| From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 16.21) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who wishes to procreate, champion justice, and make a living, has to pursue all three. Wisdom consists of pursuing the three appropriately, not in shunning them. How did this bizarre puritanism ever come to grip the human race? |